Sounds of Silence
by Shamera
Summary: Dark!fic. DH. Harry has heard waves of sound all his life, but those sounds have never reached him. And he will do anything to break the silence in his life.


Title: Sounds of Silence  
Fandom: Harry Potter  
Rating: R  
Pairing: Draco/Harry  
Words: 3482, 84 minutes  
Response to contrelamontre's _Volume_ challenge  
Summary: Dark!fic. Harry has heard waves of sound all his life, but those sounds have never reached him. And he will do anything to break the silence in his life. 

_Volume._

There had never been a more significant part of Harry's life as that word at the moment. It was not the mathematical volume of space, but rather the level of sounds in his life. 

His life was so very quiet. Silent, actually. There were the occasional moans of pain or distress here and there, and he thinks that he may be able to hear a few distant memories. People said ghosts resided here… but would memories be considered ghosts? 

Ghosts haunt a certain person or place. But what about memories? If memories were strong enough, it could certainly haunt a person. And memories were like ghosts… because they were a thing of the past; there is no way to get rid of them. 

A loud, shrieking scream sounded in the cell across from his, and Harry didn't even bother to lift his head, sitting limply on his cot as he heard responding screams start up around him. It was a grotesque version of a symphony; the conductor being the memories that haunted every waking moment. 

He should have expected it, really. His entire life had been shut away, put behind walls and doors so that he would be heard. Walls of silence had surrounded him his entire life, and permeated through his being. 

But it was always the noise that followed him, never once touching him. 

Dudley screaming as Harry sat in the background, eyes blank as he watched his aunt and uncle shower affection to soothe his cousin, ignoring the small boy sitting on his legs at the edge of the stairs. 

His uncle screaming at him and throwing glassware around, not daring to hit the boy with the shattered glass but unable to vent his anger otherwise due to the fact that the boy wasn't truly paying attention- but instead staring into a distant point behind him, trying to break through the thick wall of silence to hear the shattering glass and screeching voices. 

His aunt banging on his cupboard door for him to get up and work, screaming about how he was such a freak, and that she was putting up with him only out of the goodness of her heart. 

He had never been touched by that. 

Perhaps that was why he was such a normal child when he first went to Hogwarts. He had studied up on his psychology later on, and had read how abuse such as his had turned many a child into delinquents, unable to feel compassion or remorse for their actions before those emotions were never shown to them. 

Harry had been haunted by the fleeting sounds even throughout his time at Hogwarts, watching as the other children around him laughed and delighted in such simple actions such as hugs or pats on the back. 

He had found himself wondering why. Why did people around him sound so happy, but the volume never reached him? 

The silence around him was stifling, and overbearing. It was hard to take sometimes, as Harry was used to covering his ears when the silence got too loud for him, when his own layer of protected space enclosed in on him like guilty memories. 

Harry had enclosed himself in a ring of friends, and tried to feel the waves of sound as they bounced around, never managing to hit him. Beautiful waves, awful waves. 

Another loud scream and wild sobbing drew Harry back from his carefully crafted memories, making him lift his head to stare at the girl who had uttered such a pained sound. 

He had long gotten used to it. But it didn't make the crying hurt any less. 

Dulled green eyes sought out the figure writhing and sobbing on the dirty ground in a cell across from his, and he stood gingerly on exhausted legs to walk to the edge of his cell, to grasp tightly to his bars as he stared, torn between wanting to offer comfort and feeling contempt at them for being so goddamned _weak_. 

But more pained moans answered the crying as other people shifted; all reaching out to try and offer the pained girl help, but unable to. 

Pathetic. 

He couldn't understand how people were all so pathetic. 

And yet… Harry dropped to his knees, eyes still watching the girl, his own beaten heart still longing to reach out as she did so many times to comfort him. He was the reason that she was there to begin with, after all. 

It had started in sixth year, really. In his sixth year when Harry had gotten desperate, when he had _needed_ to be heard- to escape from the cupboard and the walls that had been built around him to preserve his silence. He needed an outlet. He needed someone there to understand his anguished cries, his pleas to be heard and to be accepted into a world where they was so much sound. 

It didn't make sense to anyone else. He had tried to explain it to Ron and Hermione, but the both of them didn't understand him. They thought that he was still grieving over Sirius's death, and had agreed to anything he wanted, even though they didn't know what he wanted in the first place. 

Harry had wanted to _feel_ something for once in his life. 

He knew anger, he knew pain and sadness, he had even know brief moments of joy in his life… but he couldn't _feel_ it. It was all in the volume, he knew. It was all in the waves and sounds that surrounded everyone else. He would never be able to feel unless that wall of silence was torn down first. 

He needed someone who would have the strength to tear it down for him. 

Harry went to Malfoy. 

There had never been any doubt of the other boy's hate for him, of the furious waves of sound and emotion that would roll off the blonde Slytherin whenever he got into a row with Harry. It was amazing, and Harry found it fascinating that someone could actually feel so much hate for him. He was flattered. 

Malfoy had not understood either what Harry had wanted, only wanting to _hurt_ Harry for everything the Golden Boy had done to him. Because of Harry, Malfoy Sr. was in Azkaban. Because of Harry, Draco's name was smeared over the headlines of the Daily Prophet, and not in any good ways. The Malfoys were Death Eaters, everyone knew. Never trust a Malfoy. 

And Harry had gone. He had gone into the Slytherin dorms one night- stuck right out of the Gryffindor common room under the protection of his invisibility cloak, and had gone into a place forbidden to the Golden Boy. 

He had stood right in front of the blonde, and made sure that the boy's attention had been focused on him when he dropped the cloak. 

Harry had tried to _feel_, had tried to understand what is it that people lived for when the blonde had started beating on him. He opened his mind to try and allow for Malfoy's insults to lodge into his brain, to stick to him and make him _suffer_. 

He had once read in Hermione's collection of book that to live and feel meant not only joy, but pain as well. And seeing that he had tried for the past six years in the most ideal of environments to feel joy and still couldn't, he decided that he would try to feel pain first. 

So he had not fought back when Draco had beaten him, had broken his arm and screamed insults at him. He had not objected when the blonde suddenly kissed him hard, kissed him with all teeth and tongue and bit Harry's mouth so hard there was the copper taste of blood between them. 

Harry had closed his eyes when the blonde ripped the perfect red and gold tie from his neck, had savagely shredded Harry's clothing and growled at him fiercely, hands much too rough and bruising. Bruising and cutting and shredding and ripping. 

_"I hate you."_ Draco had said at that time. His breath had been heavy against the nape of Harry's neck. _ "I hate your perfect skin. I hate your voice, your walk. I hate how you came here… and how you don't fight back."_

The words held more and more venom as they dripped across Harry's skin, making the boy shudder. Draco had bitten hard onto his collarbone by them, breaking the skin and drawing copious amounts of blood. 

_ "I hate those eyes of yours."_ The Slytherin all but growled. _"I want to claw them out of your bloody sockets painfully and put them in a jar above my bed as a trophy so I will always know that those beautiful eyes are MINE and will see no one else but ME."_

At this point, Draco ground his clothed arousal into Harry's leg to emphasize how willing he was to take Harry, how he wanted to do all the atrocities known to mankind on this one being. To this one person who had been the center of his focus and universe for so very long. 

Harry hadn't protested. He had stared Draco straight in the eyes as the other boy said it, amazed by the fire and the restlessness in those eyes, wanting nothing more but to have that moment forever embedded in his memory, because of the fire that was starting to burn through his body, scorched his skin everywhere Draco touched him. 

The Slytherin had bruised his mouth, scratched his nails through Harry's skin to leave bloody welts that would remain to remind Harry of that night. Draco had divested of his own clothes quickly, not bothering for Harry's comfort as he rammed into the smaller boy, making Harry cry out in pain. 

It was that night, on the cold stone floors of the Slytherin common room with no one else around but the two of them… that was the place where Harry had felt the closest to mankind. It was that night when he felt more waves of pleasure and heard himself make more incoherent sounds that sounded just like everyone else- not faked or forced. 

And it was the next morning when he had woken up alone, pained and bruised, limping and unable to focus past the haze of pain… that was when he felt happiest. 

He could _feel_. 

Ron and Hermione had not understood. They had panicked when they saw him in such a state, despite him trying to hide it from them. They had wanted to know who did it; had thought that Harry was in shock and had withdrawn into himself so far that he was having delusions. 

Nothing could have been further from the truth. Harry was _addicted_. 

As the pain faded, he had gone back again. It didn't hurt so much the second time around, but was still able to satisfy Harry when he heard the sounds. It was never silent when he was with Draco. There were always screams- either of pain or pleasure, it was hard to tell. For the first time in his life, Harry had broken out of his self-imposed layer of silence to join someone else in harmony. 

No one understood. They didn't know what was going on; the tryst between the Boy-Who-Lived and the Slytherin prince. They were always worried, but never worried enough to find out where Harry was going after hours. 

And as for Draco… 

The affair ended all too soon for Harry. But he had only ended it out of the consideration of the other boy. Harry could tell that Draco was putting more feelings into it now, more emotions. There was never pain anymore, and never any hate filled words between them. It was wrong. It wasn't how Harry had imagined it. 

So Harry had stopped going in consideration of Draco. He had seen enough friends around him falling in love to know that the blonde was dangerously close… and there would be irrevocable consequences for that. 

So he stopped. 

He simply stopped going to Draco anymore, reverting back into the silence that had been his life, ignoring all of Draco's attempts to catch his attention or make eye contact with him. He purposely strode past the blonde in the hallways, and in the course of the next few months continually ignored the dark stench of dark magic in the concealed tattoo on Draco's arm. 

It was easy enough to do. 

Until Harry felt that craving again. The need to know how it felt like to be _alive_. To hear himself and someone else. 

But then Hermione had found out. 

She had seen the looks that Draco directed at Harry, and had found them together at Harry's one moment of weakness when he went back to the Slytherin, hungry to be both hurt and comforted by the rough hands and sharp tongue. 

She had forcibly torn the two of them apart, having seen Draco draw blood on Harry's skin as was so common in their foreplay. 

She had cried, threatening to hex the Slytherin if he ever went near her best friend again, and dragging Harry back to the Gryffindor Tower with her at the same time. 

It was then that Harry felt angry again. He didn't want to hear her say that it was wrong, say that he should expect better and that he _deserved_ better. 

_"What is wrong with you?!"_ she had screeched at him, her tears impairing her speech. _ "Don't you know that he's a Death Eater? Don't you know that he's going to try and kill you one day?!"_

Harry already knew. 

It was hard to miss the dark, horrible tattoo no matter how hard he tried to ignore it. It had been comforting to him, because he knew Draco's role. He knew that the other boy would become a Death Eater just as he could never run away in the war, no matter how much he wanted to. 

It was comforting to think that one day Draco might be the one to kill him. 

_ "He'll tell all our secrets to the Dark Lord!"_

Harry hadn't cared at that point. Like one addicted on a narcotic drug, he didn't want to think about the consequences of that. The war was going to hell anyway. 

The week after she had said that- Headmaster Dumbledore died. 

A freak accident, people had whispered. Somehow, even with the great about of magic at the fingertips of a man such as Albus Dumbledore, no one could predict that their death could come in the form of a freak earthquake that had buried the entire library the Headmaster had been at under a pile of heavy rubble. 

That was when the Order members started to drop like flies. 

It was the death that the Dark Lord had been waiting for, and three days after the death of the Headmaster, Draco came to visit him. 

_ "I need for you to come with me."_ he had pleaded to Harry. _ "I need to take you away from here."_

Harry had gone. He wasn't too surprised when he was met with a squadron of Death Eaters right outside of the Hogwarts gates, all of them waiting to capture the great Harry Potter. 

Seems that whatever semblance of love and affection Malfoy had once felt for him could not compete with the devotion to his Lord. 

From then on, Harry had been locked in that cell. That prison under Lord Voldemort's headquarters, a place with no sunshine and sound other than the screaming prisoners who were all on the brink of insanity. 

They had expected him to break. 

They had not expected his apathy. 

_ "He's right mad already,"_ Harry remembered hearing one of the Death Eaters whispering as they watched Harry's nonchalance to his captured friends being tortured before him. _ "Why are we keeping him alive anyway? We should just do him in."_

_ "Our Lord wants him alive."_ another had answered. _ "So we shall keep him alive."_

It wasn't long before they caught Ron and Hermione, before Hogwarts fell to the might of the Dark Lord- one who had no one to stand against him. 

And as Harry listened to Hermione scream and writhe in her cell across from him, he wondered why that part of him that cried to help her was so small. She was one of the most important persons in his life, and yet he felt so little for her. 

There were soft footsteps before a shadow fell over the bars of his cell, making the boy look up from where he sat on the floor, both hands still tightly clenched to the rusting bars. 

It was a blonde man wearing Death Eaters' robes, face pale in the darkness and grey eyes piercing in their intensity. Harry imagined that he could feel an old rush of arousal deep in the pits of his stomach as he looked into those eyes, but didn't know if it was lust or hate. 

Was this what Draco had felt for him all along? 

The figured stared at him for a long while, before dropping to his knees to put the both of them on eye level. Harry was glad. He didn't want to strain his neck any longer trying to look up to such a tall figure while he was sitting. 

Surprisingly, there were hints of tears in those eyes. 

"I'm sorry." A soft voice cut through the silence surrounding Harry. "I never understood before… it took me so long." 

Harry just stared back at him, eyes blank. 

"Back in Hogwarts," Draco explained. "I… could never figure out what you wanted. I never knew why you kept coming to me, despite the pain I created for you. After a while, I stopped hating you. I wanted to give you whatever you wanted. I wanted to give you whatever you were seeking when you came to me. 

"I first, I thought you were seeking reality. You wanted to feel how it would be like to be hated so passionately. Then I thought that you wanted pain, because you were fascinated by it. When both conclusions proved to be empty, I was baffled. My Lord's orders came to me in my state of confusion, and I carried out those orders because it might just be what you wanted. Why else would you come to me, a known Death Eater, all the time? I had thought you wanted to be captured, so it was what I did." 

Another scream broke out in a cell close to them, followed by the wet ringing of hysterical laughter in the lungs of a broken man. 

Draco took something silver out of his robes, drawing up to Harry's eye level. 

"But after so long of thinking… of just watching you, I think I finally understand." Those grey eyes were kind, sympathetic. "You came to me because I was the only one who could _possibly_ understand, even if it took me so long. 

"You came to me because you couldn't stand the silence." 

This finally drew Harry's attention, as those green eyes snapped back towards Draco, not quite so dull anymore. Had the other boy finally understood what he wanted? 

"You wanted to escape the shell of an existence that you have." Draco continued. "You felt something with me… what it is, I still don't know. All I know is that afterwards… I wanted to serve your every whim. I wanted to fulfill your deepest desire." He leaned in close to the prisoner, ignoring the stench of unwashed flesh, brushing noses with Harry. "What is your deepest desire, Harry?" 

_Music._ Waves of music, of sound that didn't come from the outside, and isn't blocked or buffered by his shields. He wanted _volume_. 

After staring into Harry's eyes for a long moment, Draco nodded. "That's what I thought." 

He pointed the gun at Harry's neck, point blank. The cold metal caressed the tender skin softly, making Harry shudder as he was reminded of the cold stone floor of the Slytherin common room. _Yes._ This was what he wanted. 

"I hope this sound reaches you, Harry." Draco said softly. "If this doesn't, then there's no chance of anything reaching you. You would be a hopeless case." 

Harry only smile in response to that, gracing Draco with one of the most sincere and tender smile to ever come out of the Boy-Who-Lived. 

Draco struggled to smile back. 

"I love you." 

He pulled the trigger. 

The last thing that Harry knew was that wonderful sound. It was a loud bloom in the air, engulfing all his sense and making him tingle in anticipation. It was a sound that was not outside of his range, but rather… all around him, cushioning his decent into madness. 

Waves of sound. 

And… 

It… 

Was all… 

For him. 

*** 

AN: Yeah. Since I hadn't updated in a while (what? Being a week or so?), I decided to put here from my LiveJournal. ^^;; Dark. Twisted. Sadistic... not really. XD But then, _contrelamonte_ has always been about impromptu, uneditted works- so mine fits in perfectly! :D 


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